Disarm

All I really wanted was to be seen in my slide into darkness. All I really wanted was to be met in everything I felt in my body: rage, violation, grief and beauty so acute inside my ordinary days that it felt like a needle.

All I really wanted was to feel love from anyone. I wanted to feel seen. I was never so naked during this time and I was never so decorated and visible. I was never so wanted by the wrong people and invisible to the right. I was never so out of my body and in.

All I really wanted was him. I felt filled with quite enough of me then – at the beginning.

I still remember that day at the funeral parlor. My last day. Crepe tan top with the fairy-like bell sleeves, cheap nylon dress underneath. Dior pancake powder on my eighteen year old face, black control top pantyhose, mini skirt, draped in Coco Chanel, three inch black pumps so cheap it felt like I was stepping on nails whenever I moved. All I could afford and black also, to not interrupt my leg line.

That wasn't my last day of course, but it was in my heart. My grief-stricken tsunami of a heart. That's when I made the decision to leave. The last day I remember feeling part of that world. I don't remember the month or the day I just remember that suddenly, everything was different and I was not the same.

I think maybe I want to write this to you.

As if I'm talking to you.

The one I wanted. Who didn't want me but loved me in your way, didn't you? Who saw all my pathetic love for you. Who saw my love of ballroom and possibly saw what I had in me that even I didn't know yet. I think you did see some things. But I want you to know how this story begins and ends. I want you to know how it all went so dark. Maybe I want you to understand, or maybe this is the opportunity I've wanted since 1994 – to tell you how the end of your life affected mine.

This came out when I gave my body a voice inside Write Your Story, my somatic story writing circle. Practice giving your body a voice to write your story with me here.